by John Saul
“Yes, sir,” Peter Bloch managed.
“Yes, sir,” Torres mimicked, his tone icy. “We deliberately induce pain, Mr. Bloch. We induce physical pain, and mental pain, and of the worst sort. The only thing that makes it tolerable at all is that the patient is unconscious. Without the anesthetic, we are at risk of driving a patient insane.”
“He’s … he seems to be all right,” Bloch stammered, but Torres froze him with a look.
“And perhaps he is,” Torres agreed. “But if he is, it is only because the boy has no emotions. Or, as you have so inelegantly put it in the past, because he’s a ‘zombie.’ ”
Bloch flinched, but stood his ground. “I was going to shut it off,” he insisted. “I was watching him carefully, and if it looked like it was getting too bad, I was going to shut it off in spite of your orders.”
“Not good enough,” Torres replied. “If you had any questions about those orders, you should have called me immediately. You didn’t. Well, perhaps you will do this: go to your lab and begin packing anything that is personally yours. Then you will wait there for a security guard to come and escort you out of the building. Your check will be sent to you. Is that clear?”
“Sir—”
“Is that clear?” Torres repeated, his voice rising to drown out the other man.
“Yes, sir,” Bloch whispered. A moment later he was gone, and Raymond Torres seated himself once more, then waited until his breathing had returned to its normal rhythm before picking up the sheaf of test results.
Perhaps, he reflected, it will be all right after all. The boy hadn’t cracked under the battering his brain had absorbed. With any luck at all, Alex’s brain had been so busy dealing with the chaos of stimulation that he hadn’t consciously noticed what else had been happening.
Or had he?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“But he didn’t say what was wrong, did he?” Marsh asked. He folded his napkin precisely—a gesture Ellen immediately recognized as a sign that his mind was irrevocably made up—and placed it on the table next to his coffee cup.
“That’s why he wants Alex back,” Ellen said for the third time. Why, she wondered, couldn’t Marsh understand that there was nothing sinister in Raymond’s wanting Alex to come back to the Institute for a few days? “Besides,” she went on, “if he thought it was anything serious, he wouldn’t have let Alex come home with me this afternoon. He could have just kept him there.”
“And I would have had an injunction by tomorrow morning,” Marsh pointed out. “Which I’m sure he knows. In spite of that release, I’m still his father, and unless he tells us the details of the surgery, and tells us exactly what he thinks has gone wrong, Alex doesn’t go back there again.” He pushed his chair back and stood up, and though Ellen wanted to argue with him further, she knew it was useless. She would just have to do what she knew was best for Alex, and deal with Marsh after she’d done it. As Marsh left the dining room, she began clearing the dishes from the table and loading them into the dishwasher.
Marsh found Alex in his room. He was at his desk, one of Marsh’s medical texts in front of him, opened to the anatomy of the human brain, while one of the white rats poked inquisitively around among the clutter that surrounded the book.
“Anything I can help you with?”
Alex looked up. “I don’t think so.”
“Try me,” Marsh challenged. When Alex still hesitated, he picked up the rat and scratched it around its ears. The little animal wriggled with pleasure. “Mind telling me what you’re going to use to dissect this little fellow’s brain with?”
Alex’s eyes met his father’s. “How did you know?”
“I may not be a genius,” Marsh replied, “but last night you told me that considering the damage that was done to your brain, you ought to be dead. Now I find you studying the anatomy of the brain, and white rats are not exactly unheard of as subjects for dissection.”
“All right,” Alex said. “I want to see what happens to the rat if I cut as far into its brain as Dr. Torres had to cut into mine.”
“You mean you want to see if it dies,” Marsh replied. His son nodded. “Then I think we’d better go down to the Center, and I think you’d better let me help you.”
“You mean you will?” Alex asked.
“If I don’t, your rats won’t survive the first cut.”
When they came downstairs a few minutes later, Ellen glanced at them from her place at the kitchen sink, then, seeing the rat cage, smiled appreciatively. “Well, at least we agree that the house is no place for those things,” she offered, hoping to break the tension that had spoiled dinner.
“We’re taking them down to the lab,” Marsh told her. “And we may hang around awhile, if anything interesting’s going on.”
Ellen frowned. “Interesting? What could be interesting in the lab at this hour? There won’t even be anyone there.”
“Well be there,” Marsh replied. Then, while Ellen wondered what was going on, her husband and son disappeared into the patio. A moment later she heard the gate slam closed.
The fluorescent lamps over the lab table cast a shadowless light, and as Marsh prepared to inject the anesthesia into the rat’s vein, he suddenly wondered if the creature somehow knew what was about to happen. Its little eyes seemed wary, and he could feel it trembling in his hand. He glanced at Alex, who stood at the other side of the table, looking on impassively. “It won’t survive this, you know,” Marsh told his son.
“I know,” Alex replied in the emotionless voice Marsh knew he would never get used to. “Go ahead.”
Marsh slid the needle under the rat’s skin and pressed the plunger. The rat struggled for a few seconds, then gradually went limp, and Marsh began fastening it to the dissecting board. When he was done, he studied the illustration he’d found in one of the lab books, then deftly used a scalpel to cut the skin away from the rat’s skull, starting just behind the left eye and slicing neatly around to the opposite position behind the right eye, then folding the loose flap of skin forward. Then, using a tiny saw, he began removing the top of the skull itself. He worked slowly. When he was done, the rat’s brain lay exposed to the light, but its heartbeat and breathing were still unaffected.
“This probably isn’t going to work,” Marsh said. “We should have much smaller tools, and proportionally, much more of a rat’s brain than a human’s is used to keep its vital functions going.”
“Then let’s just cut away a little bit at a time, and see how deep we can go.”
Marsh hesitated, then nodded. Using the smallest scalpel he had been able to find, he began peeling away the cortex of the rat’s brain.
An hour later, all three of the rats were dead. In none of them had Marsh succeeded in reaching the inner structures of the brain before their heartbeats had ceased.
“But they didn’t have to die,” he pointed out. “I could have gone in with a probe, and destroyed part of the limbic system without doing much damage to anything else.”
Alex shook his head. “It wouldn’t have meant anything, Dad. When you cut away their brains the way Torres had to cut away mine, the rats died. So why didn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Marsh confessed. “All I know is that you didn’t die.”
Alex was silent for a long time, staring at the three small corpses on the lab table. “Maybe I did,” he said at last. “Maybe I’m really dead.”
Valerie Benson looked up from her knitting. Across the room, Kate Lewis was curled up on the sofa, her eyes on the television set, but Valerie was almost sure she wasn’t watching the program.
“Want to talk about it?” she asked. Kate’s eyes remained on the television.
“Talk about what?”
“Everything that’s bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me,” Kate replied. “I’m okay.”
“No,” Valerie replied, “you’re not okay.” She put her knitting aside, then got up and turned off the television set. “Are you planning to go
back to school tomorrow?”
“I … I don’t know.”
I should have had children, Valerie thought. If I’d had children of my own, I’d know what to do. Or would she? Would she really know what to say to a teenage girl whose father had killed her mother? What was there to say? And yet, Kate couldn’t just go on sitting in front of the television set all day and all evening, moping.
“Well, I think it’s time you went back,” Valerie ventured. Then, sure she knew what was really going on in Kate’s mind, she went on: “What happened wasn’t your fault, Kate, and none of the kids are going to hold it against you.”
Kate turned to stare at Valerie. “Is that what you think?” she asked. “That I’m afraid of what the kids might think?”
“Isn’t it?”
Kate slowly shook her head. “Everybody knew all about Dad,” she said so quietly Valerie had to strain to hear her. “I always talked about what a drunk he is so no one else could do it first.”
Valerie went to the sofa and sat close to Kate. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“It was better than having everybody gossip.” Her eyes met Valerie’s for the first time. “But he didn’t kill Mom,” she said. “I don’t care how it looks, and I don’t care if he doesn’t remember what happened after I left. All I know is they used to fight every time he got drunk, but he never hit her. He yelled at her, and sometimes he threatened her, but he never hit her. In the end, he always let her take him to the hospital.”
“Then you should be out with your friends, letting them know exactly what you think.”
Kate shook her head silently, and her eyes filled with tears. “I … I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Scared? Scared of what?”
“I’m afraid of what might happen if I leave. I’m afraid I might come back and find you … find you …” Unable to say the words, Kate began sobbing softly, and Valerie held her close.
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to worry about me. What on earth could happen to me?”
“But someone killed Mom,” Kate sobbed. “She was by herself, and someone came in and … and …”
Your father killed her, Valerie thought, but she knew she wouldn’t say it out loud. If Kate didn’t want to believe the evidence, she wouldn’t try to force her to, at least not yet. But after the trial, after Alan Lewis was convicted … She cut the thought off, telling herself that she should at least try to keep an open mind. “No one’s going to do anything to me,” she said. “I’ve been living by myself in this house for five years now, and there’s never been any trouble at all. And I’m not going to let you become a prisoner here.” She stood up briskly, went to pick up the telephone that sat on the table next to her chair, and brought it to the coffee table in front of the sofa. “Now you call Bob Carey and tell him you want to go out for a pizza or something.”
Kate hesitated. “I can’t do that—”
“Of course you can,” Valerie told her. “He comes by every day and drops off your homework, doesn’t he? So why wouldn’t he want to take you out?” She picked up the phone. “What’s his number?”
Kate blurted it out before she could think, and Valerie promptly punched the numbers. When Bob himself answered, she said only, “I have someone here who wants to talk to you,” and handed the phone to Kate. Kate sniffled, but took the phone.
Forty-five minutes later, Valerie stood at the front door. “And no matter what she says, I don’t want her back a minute before eleven,” she told Bob Carey. “She’s been cooped up too long, and she needs a good time.” When Bob’s car had disappeared down the hill, she closed the door, then went back to her knitting.
Ellen was about to call the Medical Center when she heard the patio gate slam once more. Then the door opened, and her husband and son came in. She dropped the receiver back on the hook just as the dial tone switched over to the angry whine of a forgotten phone, and didn’t try to conceal the irritation she was feeling. “You might have told me how long you were going to be gone. What on earth have you been doing?”
“Killing rats,” Alex said.
Ellen paled slightly, and her eyes moved to her husband. “Marsh, what’s he talking about?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Marsh replied, but the look on Ellen’s face told him that she was going to demand an explanation right now. He sighed, and hung his jacket in the armoire that stood opposite the front door. “We were dissecting their brains, to see how much damage they could sustain before they died.”
Ellen’s stomach turned queasy, and she had to struggle to keep her voice steady. “You killed them?” she asked. “You killed those three helpless creatures?”
Marsh nodded. “Honey, you know perfectly well that rats die in laboratories every day. And there was something both Alex and I wanted to know.” He stepped past Ellen and moved into the living room, then glanced at Alex. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce?” he asked. Then he smiled tiredly. “I have a feeling your mother and I are about to have another fight.” Alex started toward the stairs, but Marsh stopped him, fishing in his pocket for his car keys. “Why don’t you go find some of your friends?” he asked, tossing the keys to his son.
Ellen, watching, felt a chill go through her. Something had happened between her husband and her son. She was certain that an alliance had somehow formed between them that she was not a part of. A moment later, when Alex spoke again, she knew she was right.
“You mean do what we were talking about?” he asked, and Marsh nodded. And then something happened that Ellen hadn’t seen since the night of the prom last spring.
Alex smiled.
It was a tentative smile, and it didn’t last long, but it was still a smile. And then he was gone.
Ellen stared after him, then slowly turned to Marsh, her anger evaporating.
“Did you see that?” she breathed. “Marsh, he smiled. He actually smiled!”
Marsh nodded. “But it doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “At least it doesn’t mean anything yet.” Slowly he tried to explain the conversation he and Alex had had on the way home, and what they had decided Alex should do.
“So you see, the smile didn’t really mean anything at all,” he finished fifteen minutes later. “He doesn’t feel anything, Ellen, and he knows it, which is making it even worse. He told me he’s starting to wonder if he’s even human anymore. But he said he can mimic emotions if he wants to, or at least mimic emotional reactions. And that’s what he did. He intellectually figured out that he should be happy that he gets to go out for the evening and use my car, and he knows that when people are happy, they smile. So he smiled. He didn’t feel the smile, and there was nothing spontaneous about it. It was like an actor performing a role.”
The growing chill Ellen had been feeling as Marsh talked turned into a shudder. “Why?” she whispered. “Why should he want to do such a thing?”
“He said people are beginning to think he’s crazy,” Marsh replied. “And he doesn’t want that to happen. He said he doesn’t want to be locked up until he knows what’s wrong with him.”
“Locked up?” The room seemed to be spinning, and for a moment Ellen thought she might faint. “Who would lock him up?”
“But isn’t that what happens to crazy people?” Marsh asked. “You have to look at it from his point of view. He knows we love him, and he knows we care for him, but he doesn’t know what that means. All he knows is what he’s read, and he’s read about mental institutions.” His voice suddenly broke. “Hell,” he muttered. “He reads damned near everything, and remembers it all. But he just doesn’t know what anything means.”
María Torres shifted the heavy weight of her shopping bag from her right hand to her left, then sighed and lowered it to the sidewalk for a moment.
Ramón had promised to come that evening and take her shopping, but then he’d telephoned and said he wasn’t coming. Something had come up with his patient, and he had to stay in his office. His patient, she thought bitterly. His patient was Aleja
ndro, and there was nothing wrong with the boy. But Ramón couldn’t see that, not for all his schooling. Ramón had forgotten. Forgotten so much. But someday he would understand. Someday soon, Ramón would know that all the hatreds she had carefully nursed in him were still there. But for now, he still pretended to be a gringo.
And tonight, the shopping still had to be done, even though she was tired after working all day, so she’d walked the five blocks to the store, which wasn’t too bad. It was the five blocks home, with the full shopping bag, that was the hard part. Her arms aching with arthritis, she picked up the bag and was about to continue on her way when a car pulled up to the curb next to her. She glanced at it with little interest, then looked again as she recognized the driver.
It was the boy.
And he was returning her gaze, his eyes studying her. He knew who she was, and the saints—her saints—had sent him. It was an omen: though Ramón had not come to her tonight, Alejandro had. She stepped forward, and bent down to put her head through the open window of the car.
“Vámos,” she whispered, her rheumy eyes glowing. “Vámos a matar.”
The words echoed in Alex’s ears, and he understood them. We go to kill. Deep in his mind, a memory stirred and the mists began gathering around him once again. He reached across the front seat and pushed the door open. María Torres settled herself into the seat beside him, and pulled the door closed. As the old woman whispered to him, he put the car in gear and started slowly up into the hills above the town.
Fifteen minutes later, he parked the car, still listening to the words María was whispering in his ears. And then he was alone, and María Torres was walking slowly away from the car, her bag of groceries clutched close to her breast.
Only when she had finally disappeared around a bend in the road did Alex, too, leave the car, and step through the gate into Valerie Benson’s patio.
In the dark recesses of his throbbing brain, the familiar voices took up María’s ancient litany …
Venganza … venganza …
